Seth Rogen has described his latest film, Sausage Party, as “an R-rated Pixar-style movie” that’s “fucking filthy” and “really, really, really dirty.” If you’ve seen it (which a lot of people did back at SXSW, including our own Matt Donato), you’ll probably agree with that statement. You’ll also probably agree when we say it’s pretty damn funny.
Though it’s landing in theatres attached with an R rating, at one point, it almost got slapped with an NC-17. Speaking on the Howard Stern Show, Rogen revealed what exactly had to be cut in order to secure the box office friendly rating, and it apparently involved the “food orgy” scene:
There’s a pita bread and you see his ballsack in the end orgy and it had hair on it,” Rogen says. “And they asked we remove the hair from the pita bread’s ball sack … So we digitally shaved the pita bread’s ballsack and removed the hair from it.”
Surprisingly, that was the only thing that the MPAA asked the filmmakers to get rid of. But just in case the ratings board didn’t budge, Rogen says they were prepared to cut even more to get an R:
“We probably added six things into the orgy that we were like, ‘OK, these are like our sacrificial lambs,’” he says. “They are the chips that we’re willing to lose. And we lost like an eighth of one of them.”
None of this is terribly surprising. The MPAA is notorious for making bizarre requests of filmmakers and giving movies with ultra violent content a free pass while films that have strong sexual content are always given a hard time. Why? Who knows. But in this case, we’re happy that Rogen didn’t have to cut too much in order to get his desired rating.
Sausage Party arrives in theatres tomorrow, August 12th.